Saturday, 19 September 2015

I push the door open and slide through. The door closes behind me, leaving me in the dark, and my hand instinctively searches the wall for a light switch.

A familiar voice in the darkness. “Jax?”

I inhale sharply at the naked hope in that sound and the flare of elation that crashes into me from somewhere across the room. Squinting my eyes, I try to make him out. “Can I get some light here?” I say. “Not all of us can see in the dark.”

There’s movement to my left, and then a soft blue light fills the room. Not much, but enough for my eyes to finally find his.

“Hello.” Lir’s eyes travel over my face with a longing look. He steps forward until he’s within two feet of me, the closest we’ve been to each other in weeks.

If Rym looked tired, Lir looks exhausted. The charcoal-colored uniform he wears highlights the dark bags under his eyes and contrasts deeply with the paleness of his skin. The gold in his hair and eyes looks tarnished and dull. He’s lost weight, too—his features are more gaunt than angular.

“How have you been?” he says.

His almost nonchalant greeting is making it easy for me to hold on to the fire of my anger, and I inject my words with heat. “How have I been?” My voice creeps up with each word. “What the hell? You asked me to come here, to risk not only my life but everyone else’s, to ask me how I’ve been? I’ve been just peachy. How about you?” I close my eyes and take a deep breath, swallowing back the other words that are fighting to pass my lips: Why did you leave me? I’ve missed you. I’m sorry.

When I open my eyes again, he’s moved closer. I’m frozen in his gaze, a burn forming behind my eyes from the tears I refuse to let him see.

He lifts one eyebrow in a graceful arch. “Based on the context in which I have heard you use that word… I believe I’ve been peachy too.”

A sound that’s half laugh, half sob explodes from my mouth, and I throw myself into his arms. It’s the only thing I’ve really wanted to do since the moment I saw him, and though I know it’s stupid and impulsive, I can’t hold myself back anymore. There’s still a whisper of suspicion in the back of my mind, but I ignore it.

Lir jolts, a splash of cautious elation flowing from him, before wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close to his chest. One of his hands presses into the small of my back, a slight tremble in his fingers. He relaxes into the hug. His arms and shoulders loosen and his breathing steadies.

We came in peace. Lie. We had no role in the Collapse. Lie. I have always been honest. Lie. I never lied to her. Truth.

Reunited with her brother, and surrounded by Flint, Peter and her new-found grandfather, Jax Mitchell has still never felt more alone. The choice to follow Rym back to the city to find answers and see Lir is an easy one, but their reunion is cut short and Jax is forced to leave Lir behind. She finds herself traveling with some unexpected companions and heading back toward a place she’d hoped to never see again.

After being imprisoned—and tortured—on the orders of his uncle, Lir hasn’t seen daylight or linked to anyone in weeks. After a lifetime of connection, the pain and loneliness is almost too much to bear. Elated that Jax actually came, Lir finds renewed hope and strength to continue fighting his uncle’s influence over the E’rikon, even when things look hopeless and Lir’s been branded a traitor by the very people he’s trying to save.

While Jax and Lir fight separate battles, their missions have more in common than they realize. It’s a race against time to stop men driven only by greed and power. But the people they trust the most might be the very people working against them—and “family” doesn’t mean what it used to. Will they recognize their friends from their enemies in time to save the people they love or will they lose each other in the process?

The only person she knows who had a subscription to Writer's Digest at eleven and was always excited to write research papers, Theresa has been putting words to paper since a young age. Living in the mountains of central Virginia with her husband and two kids, she works as a paralegal by day, binges on Netflix at night and finds bits of time in between reading almost everything she can get her hands on and laundry to craft stories that tend to feature broken characters in sci-fi or paranormal worlds, with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure.

She's constantly lost in one fictional universe or another and is a self-proclaimed "fangirl" who loves being sucked in to new books or TV shows. Theresa originally wanted to write horror novels as an ode to her childhood passion for Stephen King novels, but between her internal Muse's ramblings and the constant praise for her sci-fi pieces from her writer's group - The Rebel Writers - she knew she should stick with what was working.